


What He Lost

by TraceyLordHaven



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Angst, Dreams vs. Reality, Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:55:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22167478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TraceyLordHaven/pseuds/TraceyLordHaven
Summary: What if we could meet the future we never had, and then had to walk away?Assume Chakotay went on a vision quest and rather than meeting his animal guide or the spirit of his father, he met someone he had never, ever thought of.
Relationships: Chakotay & Original Female Character(s), Chakotay (Star Trek) & Original Male Character(s), Chakotay/Kathryn Janeway
Comments: 20
Kudos: 39





	What He Lost

The first thing Chakotay noticed was the complete lack of birdsong.  
  
The place looked like autumn. It looked like a field in autumn, an open space with grasses and weeds in various states of life and death. Surrounded by great trees also uncertain of when they were. Some were still brightly green, some had started showing the oranges, golds, and purples of the fall, and some were bare, their last bits of cover long fallen to the floor.  
  
But there were no birds. There were no insects. No sound at all except what the wind made. Even that was less sound than an admonishment to stay silent.  
  
Shhhhhhhhhhhhh.  
  
He walked to the large tree at the center of the field and sat at its base.  
  
He wondered what this place was.  
  
“It is In-Between, the place between What-Was-Supposed-to-Be, What-Actually-Was, and What-Was-Never,” said a little girl, coming around the tree.  
  
Chakotay thought he should have been startled, but he wasn’t. He hadn’t been expecting her, but it was no surprise when she appeared from nowhere.  
  
He looked at her. Why did she look so familiar?  
  
“Who are you?” he asked. “I know you, but I know I don’t know you. You look … I don’t know, more than familiar. But you are a stranger. Aren’t you?”  
  
The girl smiled slightly and sat next to him.  
  
He asked her, “What is your name?”  
  
At that, she looked away.   
  
“I don’t have a name, I never got one because I never became real. I have only ever lived here, in the In-Between. But I didn’t happen. You chose differently.”  
  
Confusion. What did she mean? He didn't understand what she was talking about. But it made him anxious.

She said she lives in In-Between. Between what …?

“Is that what this place is called, In-Between?” Chakotay asked. “It looks familiar to me but I don’t know why.”  
  
At that she smiled.  
  
“Of course, it’s familiar to you, you dreamed it up a long time ago. That part of it is What-Was-Supposed-to-Be. Don’t you remember your fall picnics with Her and The Boy?”  
  
Chakotay felt a chill run through him.   
  
“Her?”  
  
“The lady who was to be my mother. And The Boy, he was to be my brother,” she replied.  
  
He shook his head, saying, “No, no. That was all in my head. Those picnics never happened. They were what I hoped for, what I imagined I might get to live one day. They were ...."

Then he stopped.

They had been his dreams. They were his dreams that never came true.

Chakotay looked at the girl again and said "You know my dreams. This place, it was in my dream."

She nodded.

"So, is this place real?" he asked.

This time she shook her head. 

"It's not real, not in the way your house in Arizona is real or the place you go to work is. It's real to you because you wanted it so much. It's real to you because it still hurts that you never got to come here and have The Perfect Day."

"But how are you here, though?" Chakotay asked. "I don't know you, you weren't in the dream."

She looked sad. 

"When you still dreamed this dream, you only saw Her and The Boy, they were What-Was-Supposed-to-Be" she relied, looking at the leaf in her hand. 

"If your dream had come true, if you had married Her and The Boy had been born, I would have been your surprise. The part of your dream that you never really thought up – that’s why I am in In-Between and not in What-Was-Supposed-to-Be, you never saw me. But I would have made your dream complete."

At that moment, Chakotay noticed her tears.

"You and Mommy were going to love me a lot," she said quietly.

The minute she said it, Chakotay knew it was true. He felt it in his heart - he felt her.

In a flash, he saw it all happen, the extension of his dream, the parts he never gave himself time or hope to envision. The shock of a surprise pregnancy. Kathryn’s nervousness at telling him, and her overwhelming relief at his joy. Telling their son that a brother or sister was on the way. The thrill of holding this little girl minutes after she entered the world, when he thought his days of holding babies had passed. The bewilderment of discovering her personality was completely unique, so dissimilar from his and Kathryn’s and their son’s. The comfort of having a complete family, and laughing at himself for not knowing it had been incomplete without her.

Then he saw the fall picnic, that Perfect Day, the one he had fantasized about back when he still allowed himself to indulge in dreams. The Perfect Day made More Perfect with this girl seated between Kathryn and himself, their son chasing the dog nearby, as they looked through all the brightly colored leaves they’d gathered that day to pick the reddest one.

Chakotay looked at this girl sitting next to him in In-Between. She looked so alone.

He pulled her into his lap and held her. She laid her head on his shoulder with a sigh. He felt his own tears come.

Chakotay didn't know how long they sat. The sun apparently never moved in In-Between. As they both wept, the wind began blowing again. Not admonishing them but trying to soothe and comfort.

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Chakotay began humming. The girl pulled away a little bit and looked at him.

"That's the song you were going to sing to The Boy."

And it was. Chakotay was humming a lullaby he remembered his mother singing to him and his sister when they were children. He had sung it to Kathryn one time on New Earth, a few years before he gave up.

He brushed the girl’s hair out of her face and smiled. "So now I'll sing it for you."

Chakotay leaned back against the tree and sang to her all the songs he had planned to sing for the family he had desired. And when he got through those, he sang songs he had never really thought of singing to a child, but that he wanted to sing now for this little girl. Songs he had loved, songs Kathryn had loved, songs he remembered from friends on the ship, and so on.

When he had exhausted his repertoire, Chakotay and the girl sat in silence for a while. She had become real to him, as real as the dream about Kathryn and a son ever had been.

Chakotay whispered to her, "Would you like a name?"

She whispered back, "Yes, very much."

He thought about it. He had always liked family names, they remind children of their roots. He had always thought his son would be called Kol, in honor of his grandfather. With the middle name Edward.

"How about Teya?" he asked. It was the feminine version of his own name.

"Teya," she said, trying it out. "Teya. I am Teya."

She sat up and looked at him, smiling.

"I like it," she said.

Chakotay was glad. So glad, he realized, that he must have been very afraid she wouldn't like it. She already had the power to break his heart.

"I am so sorry you’ve been without a name for so long, sweet girl," he said. "But you are real to me now, and you have a name. As much as I can love you, I do."

Teya breathed in sharply. "Thank you, Daddy" she said.

She suddenly pointed towards the edge of the field. "Look!"

Chakotay followed her gaze. Standing there, waving to this little girl, was a boy. He looked just a few years older than Teya. Kol had come to collect his little sister.

Further behind them, in the shadows of the trees, he could make out the shape of an adult. A woman. Kathryn.

He wanted to run to her, to throw his arms around her and this family that Was-Supposed-to-Be. But he had lost that chance. He had traded it for flattering attention and a lust that burned out in a matter of months.

Teya started towards her mother and brother, then stopped and ran back to Chakotay.

"Are you going to be OK, Daddy?" she asked. 

He was going to have to return to What-Actually-Was. Where he hadn’t spoken to Kathryn in years, where Kol and precious little Teya didn't exist. Where he never got to have this family. Where no one loved him as much as he imagined they did in What-Was-Supposed-to-Be.

So Chakotay lied to his little girl.

"I am going to be fine. And you are going to be wonderful. Go have fun with your brother, and let your mommy take care of you both. And remember that I love all of you."

She threw her arms around his neck, kissed his cheek, and then ran off to meet her family.

The family he never got to have. The family he dreamed of for so long, but that he gave up on in the moments before the way to them was opened. He'd been given a chance to have them but failed to grab it, he had been distracted by something fleeting.

As he turned in the opposite direction, walking away from the tree and towards What-Actually-Was, Chakotay accepted he would never see them again. That dreaming of them would be too hard. That the dull emptiness of the life he actually lived would be preferable to the steel blades and serrated edges of remembering what he'd lost.

Chakotay reached his edge of the field. He took a deep breath and stepped once more into the shadows he had cast for himself so many years ago.


End file.
